Vote for SimpleBotics on instrutables.com!

In the past, I have won one contest on instructables. With your help and click of a button, I may be able to win the cardboard and duct tape contest. My entry into the contest was the cardboard and duct tape laundry robot. The prizes for this contest include a shirt, duct tape, cutting board, jig saw, and utilities knives. What's in it for you? Well, I'll promise to publish a video tutorial on making robot duct tape art! Thank you and to vote, visit this link. http://www.instructables.com/id/Cardboard-Robot-Laundry-Folder/

Hex based digital board

It's been a while but we gave the old laser cutter a dusting down this evening and set it to work, trying out some ideas for our Dreadball board game.

Funky foam is a great spongy material for supporting our playing squares - only when it's cut on the laser, the cuts are quite wide, even at full speed (60mm/sec) and at low power (less than 3mA).

Despite this, we managed to get a usable frame from the foam, with pieces just 1mm-2mm wide:

We couldn't find any clear acrylic for this test (the final idea is to cover one side with a black sticker then laser shapes out of it to allow the LED to shine through from underneath). But we did find some rather fetching semi-translucent red

This sits over the funky foam just right!

The completed assembly (minus internal electronics). Although it's just a prototype, it's looking pretty nice.

The next step is to wire up some buttons and LEDs and give it a try!

Japan to launch their own robot into space by this summer!

Currently, Opportunity and Curiosity are roaming the surface of Mars, and they're the only robots in space. That all ends, however, this summer. According to Dentsu inc. a robot named Kirobo will be sent to the ISS (international space station) to communicate with humans. Dentsu has also stated on their site that the launch will occur this summer, and the robot will be onboard this fall. Now the robot itself has some pretty nifty features built in. For example, it can understand Japanese speech, withstand zero-g environments, and even recognize faces. Aside from all its special features, Kirobo is a robot based of a consumer kit called Ribo. It has also been designed from the same person who developed Evolta ( a robot that completed a triathlon). Kirobo, however, has just been upgraded to be capable of space travel. Thanks for reading and check out the video above!



source: the video listed above

RASSOR, NASA's Robotic Solution for Creating Rocket Fuel in Space

On every space exploration, rocket fuel is vital. As a result, NASA is developing a new type of robot that will mine on the moon. RASSOR is what they call it, and they plan to use this robot to help create rocket fuel in space. Using special claws on each of its sides, RASSOR will dig and mine through the moons soil and gain necessary ingredients to make rocket fuel. Along with this lunar robot, NASA also plans to create miniaturized factories to create the rocket fuel right on the planet's surface. If the RASSOR robot is successful, then astronauts won't have to take any second trips back to earth to refuel. All this will then lead to longer ventures into space.

Say Hello to the Mint Commercial All Over Agian...

Since Mint is aesthetic like apple products, their commercials should be too. Thats why I designed this new commercial featuring Mint. Just like Apple commercials, the ad is simple and to the point. Hope you like it!

Linear rails for possible CNC?

A few weeks ago, at one of our Thursday BuildBrighton meetings, Matt suggested another cnc machine idea.   We've already completed one - a pcb drilling machine - and while the mechanics and software side of things were pretty good (for a �30+ cnc) the quality of the stepper motors was always a little suspect!

These cheap little stepper motors are all over the internet (and despite being rated at 5v as this one is, we found running them at 7v-9v the minimum, else they stall really really easily, but they can handle being driven hard at up to 12v. Beyond that, we've no idea - we didn't want to intentionally burn one out!)

What's not immediately apparent from this photo is that the shaft is actually offset from the centre:

And that's because, inside, there's a load of internal gearing which gives these little motors a pretty decent amount of torque for such a small package. In fact, the motors we had were geared by 1:64 on a 1/64 stepper motor - meaning they required 4096 steps for one complete revolution. By the sounds of things, perfect for ultra-tiny movements, and therefore precision accuracy.

Unfortunately, the internal gearing comes with a price - backlash!
When you send up to 100 step pulses to these motors, they can either move a great distance (depending on the size of the cog the motor is turning of course!) or they may not move at all, as all the slack in the cogs is taken up. This can be compensated for, a little, in software, but it's not ideal. So a while back, when some cheap steppers came up on eBay, we got hold of three decent motors and waited for the opportunity to present itself...

As often happens, when eating pizza and talking rubbish at BuildBrighton, discussions soon got around to making another cnc machine - this time with a multiple head attachment, for doing solder paste spotting as well as pick and place for SMT components. We already had the stepper motors, we've got access to equipment for cutting frames, inside of messing about with cheap-and-ok, we thought if we're going to do it, we'll make a pretty decent spec machine this time. And that means linear rails....

This morning, Mr Postie dropped off another peculiar looking package at Nerd Towers, covered in hieroglyphics from the Far East and we tore into it:

Yay! 12mm linear rails. Perfect for any decent-sized cnc machine (up to about A3 cutting bed size we reckon, certainly more than enough for up to A4). They're actually quite chunky but in a reassuring way. The mounting holes are already tapped, ready to take an M5 bolt.

Check out those tiny little ball bearings! These rails (we've got six) are going to be perfect, at least for our X/Y axis on the next CNC machine (whatever that is, whenever it gets made). They're actually quite big for a z-axis, unless Matt has ideas about making a massive monster-sized machine.......

Welcome to the official SimpleBotics web app

I am aware that the past view days have not had any posts, however, I have been working on a web app for SimpleBotics. Today, I am pleased to say that the web app is now up. With the all new web app, an awesome post is just a tap away. Enjoy!